No.10 aide resigns in emails row
Updated on 11 April 2009
Gordon Brown's closest special adviser, Damian McBride, resigns after his emails containing outrageous smears about Tory politicians are leaked.
He was once the prime minister's top spin doctor. Now he has been forced out after his scurrilous emails were leaked.
Damian McBride had to go because those messages, on a Downing Street email account to Labour blogger Derek Draper, contained unfounded gossip about leading Conservatives and their families - some of it sexual, some of it just nasty.
Is that it? Or should others quit too?
Number 10 had at first tried to save Damian McBride, issuing an apology about what it called "juvenile and inappropriate" emails from a Downing Street account.
But when leading Labour figures such as Charles Clarke joined Tory calls for the special adviser to be sacked, the game was up and Gordon Brown said there was no place in politics for such material.
The emails, discussing possible smear stories, had found their way to the Tories' favourite blogger, Guido Fawkes, and the Sunday newspapers.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy is joined on the line from the Canary Isles by the man the McBride email was destined for - the former Labour spin doctor, Derek Draper.
